Chinese version (中文版).

Hello.

You have reached the web page of Niniane Wang. I live in San Francisco. I am the founder of Evertoon. Previously I was Chief Technology Officer of Minted, cofounder of Sunfire Offices, and an engineering manager at Google and Microsoft for a combined decade.

My blog.

Follow me on Twitter:

My resume.


Projects I've Enjoyed

Minted is a platform for crowdsourcing graphic designs and art from a global community. Minted is around 150 employees in San Francisco, and has raised around $50M total.
Founded Google Lively, an avatar and 3D-graphical social product.
Led the Gmail revenue team. We increased per-user revenue by 140%.
Cofounded Google Desktop Search, which reached 75M monthly active users. We laughed, we wept, we banged our heads against the table.
Movie Showtimes on google.com.
Cloud rendering, which shipped with "Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight". SIGGRAPH sketch, Journal of Graphics Tools paper, etc.
Rendering rain and snow. SIGGRAPH sketch, Game Programming Gems article, etc.

Some side projects I've enjoyed:


Fun

Current obsessions:

A few photos.

My name "Niniane" is pronounced like "Ninian". It sounds like Vivian, substituting n's for v's. ... I chose the name in 1995. It comes from The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart. Before that, I went by my chinese name 王忻.

My brother Tom is a video game programmer for Riot Games (maker of League of Legends) in Santa Monica, California. Previously he was a gameplay engineer at Blizzard, and at EA on Sims 3. The "Frugal Sim" trait in Sims 3 is modeled after me and my mother. Tom is the best brother in the world!

My favorite books:

  1. Shadow of the Giant, by Orson Scott Card
  2. Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
  3. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
  4. Shadow Puppets, by Orscon Scott Card
  5. Harry Potter volume 7 (which met impossibly-high expectations)


Writings

While driving down to California, I suddenly figured out what the song "Hotel California" means to me.

A couple career-advice articles I wrote:

An entertaining piece I found on the differences between men and women.


Of Bets and Maps

In the year 2000, three Caltech friends and I embarked on a weekend road trip in eastern Washington state. We stopped at a little diner -- scrambled eggs, apple pie, your standard rural American diner.

On the wall hung a whiteboard with the daily specials. The bottom of the whiteboard was covered by a drawing of an orange crescent half-emerging from blue waves. Dan Egnor, programmer extraordinaire, said the crescent is the moon. I maintained that it was a shark.

"Why on earth would they draw a shark?" asked Dan. "In orange?"

"I'll bet you," I said.

We agreed on the terms: the loser would place the winner's name into their next shipping software. If Dan won, his name would have been hidden into Flight Simulator 2002. If I won, my name would be in Dan's next search engine creation.

We called over the waitress. "What is that on the bottom of the whiteboard?"

"It's the ocean."

"No, the thing coming out of the waves."

"Oh, a shark."

Dan went on to create Google Local Search, and in 2004, I became an Easter egg in Google Maps. (news article)


E-mail:

If you enjoyed this, let me know.

I leave you with this Simpsons quote:

Judge: Your license is hereby revoked, and I'd like you to attend traffic school and two months of Alc-Anon meetings.
Homer: Your honor, I'd like that stricken from the record.
Judge: No.
463-447-5268